If I could get out of here I would have my horse and my sword and be no worse off than the day I had arrived on Fovea. Varne, I reasoned, would be the easiest target and they would likely focus on him first. While they were diverted I could make it to the horses.
On Blizzard’s back, anything was possible.
I wanted to do that so badly - to run, get out of here, put this danger behind me. These men were here to kill me and that terrified me. If I could get out of here they could loot the wagons, kill the other men and be satisfied, and likely never even miss me.
Until they saw a huge guy on a white horse running away, I knew. Then the one with the bow would take me down. If I panicked they would have me.
So I forced myself to settle down. In nuclear power you called this “emergency mode,” where you took on calmness to meet the crisis. I had done it in hundreds of drills and I did it now, letting my heart slow closer to normal even as another arrow whipped through the air only inches above me. At least I knew my white padding hadn’t given me away – if they could see it then I would already be dead. I remembered where we had laid the saddles out and scrambled over there on knees and elbows, keeping as much in the dirt as I could. Their having to search through that greater mass would buy me a few seconds.
Verne clambered twenty feet to my left, still swearing about his sword. Krell lay about ten feet to my right, forcing as much of his body as he could beneath a log that we had pulled over to the fire to sit on. As I neared the saddles I could smell Chennog’s extreme body odor from his diet of over-spicy jerked beef. He lay on the other side of them – I could make out his globular form in the dark.
I listened for our enemies, and could hear them moving through the camp. At first I thought that they must be looking for us and I wondered why they hadn’t found me. We weren’t well hidden, they likely had their night vision, and we weren’t many.
Blizzard whickered about five feet from me. I could make out his form distinctly. They hadn’t gone for the horses yet. They were still trying to spook us.
“Chennog,” I whispered, more breath than sound.
A moment, then, “Rancor?”
“More quietly, my friend.”
“How many have you seen?” he asked me.
“There must be thirty of them.”
“No,” he said. “Less than ten.”
“Not likely. They’re thick on every side!”
Chennog grunted and I could hear him shuffle toward me. We were on either side of his saddle; I could hear him fumbling with something underneath it.
“Do you have your sword?” he asked.
“I do,” I whispered. “And you?”
“I have my spare.” He meant a dirk he left behind his saddle. I’d seen him pull it a couple of times. It would be a good choice for a close-fighting brawl, and he had blackened the blade.
“Only one of them has a bow,” he said.
“How do you know that?”
“You want to live or talk?” he asked me.
I bit my lip and said nothing. Chennog knew what he was doing and I knew that I didn’t. I decided to follow his lead. We waited there, quiet in the dark, as the attackers circled. In my mind their numbers grew and grew. Verne kept cursing a blue streak and called out for Chennog and Krell and me a few times. I believed I knew what Chennog was waiting for and, cold-blooded as it was, I didn’t call out to Verne. Moments later Verne still cussed up a storm and it sounded like he had finally found something to fight with. No matter how many warriors they numbered, they wouldn’t wait forever.
I gathered my feet beneath me, hoping that our tack still hid me. My sword hilt felt wet in my palm. Chennog’s breathing slowed on the other side of the saddles. I waited, every moment like an hour.
“Keep your head, lad,” Chennog whispered to me. “You aren’t going to help him with an arrow in your guts.”
“Whoa – there you are, blast you,” Verne swore. I heard him grunt, as if he had been punched in the stomach. I was like a compressed coil now – still waiting, still waiting …
The clang of metal, another grunt, Verne again. Then another grunt, and a groan, and finally I heard the sound of him hitting his knees. I started to think that the opportunity had been wasted. Chennog swore softly next to me. He didn’t like it, either.
No more than three feet in front of me, the telltale creak of the bow. Chennog hissed, having heard it too.
“Take ‘im,” he rasped.
I leapt up like a shot, the sword swinging. The blade cut through the other man’s bow like it wasn’t there and took him straight across the chest, knocking him aside and piercing his rib cage. I sprinted toward Verne now, hoping that most of them were around him, probably beating him into the ground.
I wasn’t wrong. I saw seven of them ringed around Verne, barely visible in the night. Swords flashed in the dim starlight. Verne had fallen to his knees, a red pile spurting blood and occupied with dying.
I sprinted to the place of his murder - not to save him, because I knew he couldn’t be saved, but to rescue myself from his same fate. Chennog had closed on the group of them in a crouch, his dark weapon out. I took the first of them across the back before they ever saw me. Chennog engaged the next attacker as I pushed my man forward, jamming my sword into the chest of the one in front of him. Another turned toward me, his mouth open, his dark hair hanging wet in strands, a splash of red across his face. Chennog jammed his dirk into that man’s back, up into his lung.
My second man dropped as the other four realized I had struck. They were squat men with close-cropped black hair, with pug noses and slanted eyes. They wore tight-fitting leather breast guards and fought with short, stabbing swords. On the other side of Verne, Krell rose up like vengeance behind two of them, obviously having decided to back us. His heavy broadsword rose and fell, and one of the two men dropped, screaming. Two others turned toward him, and Chennog and I struck again.
I ripped my sword from my man’s chest and cut low, taking a new man below the knee. He screamed and fell. Chennog struck high and missed, and his man turned on him, delivering a stab right into Chennog’s stomach. Chennog fell back, out of my line of sight.
Krell swung high and cleaved into the side of one man’s head. There were two left, and the one closest to me had terrified eyes. If he bolted, I would likely lose him and never know why this had happened.
He swung for my side and I parried. His sword recoiled and he went for my head, making me parry again. I heard a grunt from Krell’s direction and assumed that it was he. My arms felt like lead, my head pounding and my vision cloudy. The other man looked for an opening to break and I was afraid that I would give it to him.
He leveled his sword and drove the point at my chest with both hands. This time I parried by hitting his blade as hard as I was able. I had hoped that his blade would shatter but instead he turned his wrist somehow and pushed my weapon to the side. The flat of his blade took me on the side of the head and knocked me off my feet, leaving me helpless.
He could have stayed and finished me or he could run and live another day. He chose the latter. I climbed awkwardly to my feet and looked to see if they’d left anyone else standing.
“Krell?” I said. “Anyone? Is anyone else here?”
A long pause, then, “Yeah, I’m OK. Not cut bad.”
The man whose leg I had amputated laid holding his stump and groaning. The rest seemed to be clean kills. I could hear the man who had run scrambling through the underbrush.
“Chennog is dead,” Krell said, having moved. “So is Verne. I don’t hold out much hope for Tareen.”
“Why?” I asked, simply.
“They were here for the wagons,” he said.
“Whom are they working for?”
“Probably out of Tamara,” he said. “Stinking Confluni, secretive bastards, kill anyone who goes into their nation, doesn’t stop them from raiding into ours. They are raiders, Rancor, and there will be more of them. They come back with our we
alth to show each other how brave they are.”
Krell stood and spat again, this time on the body of the dying man. He wouldn’t offer the Confluni War’s Wages, and it didn’t seem like the little man would be asking. We looked at each other for a long moment, but didn’t say anything. This was what men with money hired men with swords to do. This was our life.
It took us an hour to get the fire started and then, with torches, to search the surrounding area. The wounded Confluni died in that time. My skin crawled, waiting for arrows or armed men to come swarming out of the woods, but it didn’t happen.
Tareen’s skin and face were charred. Someone had come up from behind him and cut his throat. Varne had taken no less than fifteen strikes to his body before he had died. Chennog’s gut wound had gone through his spine as well, and he had fallen on his dirk. We found the other two dead men with the teamsters.
Of those fourteen teamsters, six had survived. We were a day out of Volka. Krell felt that he could handle the extra wagon. I could ride point into the city. We buried our dead in shallow graves and beheaded our enemies, posting the sick trophies on poles cut from saplings as a warning both to other merchants and to other raiders. Volkhydro had a way of taking care of itself.
It had been a teamster’s idea, but I didn’t argue.
We dragged ourselves into Volka just before the sunset, reporting the attack to the city watch. To my surprise, they seemed genuinely concerned and sent out a patrol as they questioned us. I must have told the story of the fight to the watch captain and his lieutenants four times before they were satisfied.
The lead teamster and Krell had already found lodging and I slept like a log. The next morning we were up with the sun and had sold half of our wares before noontime. From what I could tell, the head teamster was a shrewd negotiator and got an exorbitantly high price for Bawser’s wares. He sold Tareen’s beer as well, although no one from that company had been left alive.
Tareen, you dumb, pompous bastard, I thought. I could imagine what had happened. He hadn’t taken his watch seriously and they had gotten behind him. Tareen never doubted that the world waited for him and that he had nothing to fear. A thought like that in a place like this was a death sentence, I knew now. His sister would have another cross to bear. If I went back I could stand to inherit two companies, but it wasn’t an option.
I rode the cobbled streets of Volka to get a feel for the new city. It reminded me of what Boston must have been like before engines and skyscrapers. They had a busy wharf with ships pulling in and out, surrounded by a crowded warehouse district and multiple trade houses, many of which dwarfed Bawser’s. Some were huge, with wagons running in and out of their gates and walls of stone surrounding them. Others were no more than a hole in the wall, crowded into an alley.
Past this, row after row of small ships bobbed on the docks. Smiths, tanners, handlers, restaurants, bars, jewelers, carpenters and cobblers – just as in any other city I could imagine. Merchants and traders walked among porters and street sweepers, past beggars and the rich in carriages. Men and women supporting themselves as best they could.
It seemed to me that the city had a friendly character. People smiled and laughed, they dealt fairly with me when I got my equipment seen to and bought some supplies. Men dressed as often in furs as in cloth, even though it was still hot out. I uncommonly saw men bare-chested in fur breeches, and the women seemed to go in for low-cut cotton blouses with frills and long skirts of various colors. I couldn’t help but look down a few ample bosoms, smiling when they caught me, which was most of the time. In the taverns and the market places I saw more women like Elle, quick with a comment and only slightly slower to hit their men. The men were rougher and the women rowdier, most likely to be able to handle them. I also saw that many people here had dogs, though more along the size of a wolfhound or mastiff than a spaniel or terrier.
But it is funny what you miss in the morning. I still missed the coffee. Why do you forsake me, Juan Valdez? Or toilet paper – replaced as in the Arab world with the left hand. Hold out a gold coin in the market square in your left palm and you will be hard pressed to get someone to take it, although just switch it to the right and you are fine. No matter what I saw or went through I couldn’t bring myself to do that. Usually I kept a stock of handkerchiefs and my water skin handy.
I had made my own toothbrush out of a horsehair eyebrow brush of Aileen’s. She had found the idea of brushing my teeth so funny, although she liked it that my mouth didn’t stink. I used soap made from fat burned with lye. It toughens your skin but it leaves you clean. I noticed in the cities that people regularly stank and I didn’t like that. Also being unclean in a big city is what spread diseases like bubonic plague. Fortunately, at my size no one gave me a hard time about being clean.
A high stone wall and parapet ringed Volka. A murder hole stood before the front gate and catapults in the harbor along the breakwater. I thought that surprising. In ancient England, many cities had walls and gates around them, but the cost of their maintenance is tremendous and the benefit questionable. Holding the wall was more difficult than mining underneath it or ramming a piece of it down. Sieges turned walled cities into death traps and could last for years.
The sun would soon set at the end of the second day, and Krell and I had found a bar. Another thing to miss: cold beer. The local beer tasted more like a lager - stronger but warm and a lot less refreshing. Seeing as they offered nothing else, I was getting used to it.
One thing had gnawed on me about the fight with the Confluni and, without Chennog to ask, I brought it to Krell.
“How did Chennog know that there were just a few raiders?” I asked him.
Krell laughed and took a pull from his beer.
“How many did you think there were?”
Why not be honest? “Thirty, maybe more. I was lost.”
Krell nodded. “They circle to do that to you. You keep hearing marching feet and you get it in your head that every pair is new. Old raider trick.”
“Chennog seemed to know exactly how many there were, though.”
Krell nodded. “I thought there were about seven. Likely Chennog did, too. One of them had a limp; another had a purse full of coins. You just hope they are all circling and you count out how many pair of feet you hear until that one comes back around again.”
“And the one archer?”
Krell smiled and drank again. He looked at me, a kind of gritty wisdom in his eyes now as he instructed me.
“All of the arrows came from the same direction.”
Now I nodded. It seemed so simple now. I could hear the jingling purse in my mind, and I could imagine that all of the arrows came from the same place.
Right then the head teamster found us. His job was to sell the wares that we had brought to his town. Once there were no more security issues, he took charge of us.
“Bawser will be well pleased, lads,” he said. The teamster had excited eyes and a light step. He couldn’t contain himself enough to sit with us. “Tareen’s father, too, though maybe not so much so.”
Krell shrugged, and then lifted his beer mug. “I think we can all agree to tell him that his son died well, with a sword in his hand, and that we owe him our lives.”
“Though almost the opposite is true,” said the teamster.
“Better he should have been hiding under a wagon,” I added, looking him in the eyes.
He bristled, but let it go. “Done and done,” he said, and Krell and I drank. “Bad enough a father should outlive his son.”
“Agreed,” Krell and I said in unison.
“Can you two be ready to return at first light?”
Krell nodded. I sighed.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I will not be returning,” I said, simply. “I have business elsewhere.”
The teamster’s jaw dropped. Krell looked at my profile, sitting next to me at the bar. “Bawser will not like that.”
“I don’t think I will have to
explain it to him,” I said.
“So, what do we tell him? You know he won’t hold your pay for you.”
“I can be paid out of profits from the sale.”
The teamster shook his head. “I have no authority to pay you, and most of the money was taken in note, Rancor, against Bawser’s debts here. It would do no good for us to be sacked on the way back to Myr, especially when we are so many men light.”
“What about the money from the beer?”
They were quiet. Krell looked at the teamster, who looked at Krell. Finally he sighed and handed me a pouch. It felt heavy as I took it.
“There, then,” he said. “Though Tareen’s father will be no friend of yours for having robbed him.”
“Bawser can repay him out of my wages,” I said.
“I think that you were not paid that much,” Krell grumbled.
It occurred to me then that he had given me the entire profits from the beer wagon. Seeing as they had sold the wagon itself and the horses too (we had no one to drive it) these were considerable. I estimated that I had over two hundred gold coins there.
I could have split it with the two of them on the spot and helped them derive some story of how the beer shipment had been lost, but who knew if they would keep the deal? I also wouldn’t be surprised if the teamster hadn’t kept some out of the sale himself. I didn’t know the value of a vat of beer, but the vats themselves were huge. Six draft horses and a wagon weren’t cheap. Besides, there was no guarantee that they wouldn’t say that I had taken the money no matter what I did.
Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles) Page 14
